Quaker Oatmeal Squares: Brown Sugar. As I mentioned in last week’s article on what I eat in a day, my mid-morning meal is usually a big bowl of Fage yogurt and blueberries with some Kashi or oatmeal mixed in. The store was out of Kashi the other day, so I grabbed a box of these on a lark. Never had them before. They’ve turned into a Bob Ross happy accident. Love ’em. The flavor is hard to place. Kinda taste like waffles. There’s a decent amount of fiber in these too, which my gut appreciates. I’m going to ride with the oatmeal squares as the grain in my yogurt bowls for a while.
The Life of a Salesman. I love reading features about how people work. I enjoy them even more when they’re about jobs that have all but vanished. This LIFE photo essay by Cornell Capa is one of those. Inspired by Death of a Salesman, which had come out the year before, Capa spent four weeks shadowing Robert Brooks, a real salesman who rode trains out of Long Island through Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit, peddling umbrellas. Brooks fronted his own expenses and only made money when he closed a sale, and that year buyers were pinching pennies. No wonder Willy Loman was such a sad sack; the life of a traveling salesman was tough. The loneliness of Brooks comes through in the photos.
1994 Interview With Eugene Sledge. If you haven’t listened to my interview with Henry Sledge about his father Eugene’s brutal war memoir, With the Old Breed, I highly recommend you do. After reading the book and talking to Henry, I went down some Pacific WWII YouTube rabbit holes and found this 1994 interview with Eugene about his experience on Peleliu. It was cool to see the man himself talk about his experience. One thing that struck me was how concerned he’d been about not wanting to let down his fellow Marines. He had a deep sense of manly honor.
Survival in the Executive Jungle by Chester Burger. I stumbled on this one while poking around old books on the Internet Archive (I enjoy reading old ephemera). Published in 1964, the book reads like Machiavelli from the Mad Men era. It covers things like how to handle your boss, your colleagues, and your own ambition. Plenty of the advice has aged out (the world of the gray flannel suit is gone), but a fair amount still holds up. My favorite was the chapter “Time Worshipers and Clock Watchers.” It’s a nice kick in the pants about putting first things first by separating the work that actually matters from the busywork you do to look busy. You can read the whole thing for free on the Internet Archive.
On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published 5 Underexamined Consequences of the Declining Birth Rate and Sunday Firesides: Dying of Embarrassment.
Quote of the Week
Facts that are not firmly faced have a habit of stabbing us in the back.
—Sir Harold Bowden
